An Incredible Crypto Assets Phenomenon

In the first quarter of this year, a cryptocurrency with a laughable name and no practical use surprisingly became one of the few mainstream tokens to rise against the trend. It not only caused a stir in the crypto assets circle but even garnered widespread attention on Wall Street, leaving traditional investors utterly confused.

The co-founder of a well-known venture capital company retweeted a related tweet, suggesting that a hedge fund was suspected of making large purchases early on, while a top market maker even listed it as a core asset allocation. The founder of this market maker publicly stated that he holds the token.

The token that has caused such a sensation is Fartcoin.

A Unique Origin Story

The birth of Fartcoin originated from a conversation between artificial intelligences. In an AI agent model funded by a tech giant's founder, a casual chat about a certain well-known entrepreneur "liking the sound of farts" triggered a series of reactions. The AI suggested: "How about we issue a coin called Fartcoin?" Thus, the token named Fartcoin was born on October 18, 2024.

Born with a Halo

Fartcoin has attracted the attention and support of many Crypto Assets enthusiasts since its launch.

On December 13, 2024, a tweet mocking Fartcoin quickly spread across social media. What drew widespread attention to this tweet was not its content, but the identity of the person retweeting it: a co-founder of a well-known venture capital firm. Although he did not explicitly state that he purchased Fartcoin, for such a purely meme project, receiving a public retweet from a prominent figure in Silicon Valley venture capital is in itself a form of "capital endorsement" and "going viral signal."

Another more substantive signal comes from on-chain fund movements. Shortly after Fartcoin was launched, when its market capitalization was still less than 100 million USD, community members tracked on-chain addresses and discovered behavior patterns highly similar to those of a certain seasoned hedge fund — multiple large purchases, frequent interactions, and early positioning.

The hedge fund was established in 2018 and is a compliant registered all-weather strategy fund initiated by a group of veterans in the Crypto Assets industry, known for focusing on narrative-driven assets. Its founders have repeatedly expressed interest in the AI meme space on social media platforms by the end of 2024, even retweeting a post on December 13 asking "Does the fund hold $30 million in Fartcoin?" Although there was no direct response, it was widely interpreted by the community as "implicitly entering the market."

At the same time, cross-validation of multiple on-chain data shows that several strategy pool addresses are very similar to this fund, frequently engaging in buying, locking, and liquidity allocation operations during the early stages of Fartcoin.

In addition, a top market maker in the crypto market has appeared early on the main holding list of Fartcoin. According to on-chain data, this market maker holds 1.56% of the total supply of Fartcoin, ranking fourth. In the asset allocation of its main address, Fartcoin ranks in the top five, even surpassing some mainstream assets.

Multiple accounts highly related to the main address of the market maker were also active synchronously during the early launch of Fartcoin - from building positions, market making to arbitrage, all done seamlessly and effortlessly.

It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of 2025, the founder of the market maker explained the hedging logic of Fartcoin's over-the-counter trading in an interview and admitted for the first time that he personally also holds Fartcoin, jokingly stating: "I'm just currently in a state of loss."

With such market support, it is no wonder that the increase of Fartcoin is so notable and strong, as its trend completely does not follow the market.

According to data statistics from a top trader, in the first quarter of 2025, most mainstream assets experienced significant pullbacks: ETH has dropped over 46% year-to-date, SOL decreased by 24%, and sectors like AI, L1, DeFi, and Gaming are particularly bleak. In this "red sea", Fartcoin is the only green in the entire chart, with a growth rate of 14.84% in the first quarter. Against the backdrop of poor performance from many assets, Fartcoin stands out remarkably.

Not only did it rise against the trend during the downturn, but after the market improved in May, the increase of Fartcoin still led mainstream assets, rising over 50%, far exceeding Bitcoin's 23% during the same period.

Sparked Controversy on Wall Street

The popularity of Fartcoin has not stopped within the Crypto Assets circle. What truly makes it a phenomenon is not just the逆势上涨 of its price, but also the widespread discussion it has sparked on Wall Street.

"We are currently in the Fartcoin phase of the market cycle." This statement comes from a billionaire who accurately predicted and shorted a well-known financial institution, the founder of a hedge fund. In his letter to investors for the fourth quarter of 2024, he spent an entire paragraph analyzing the rise of Fartcoin, calling it "a product of pure speculative sentiment" and comparing it to other famous financial bubble phenomena.

It is worth mentioning that this investor belongs to the Democratic Party and has established short positions in two leveraged ETFs related to the largest corporate holders of Bitcoin.

In his view, the name Fartcoin is itself a meme coin full of irony, with no intrinsic value, no practical applications, and no substitutability. He even said that rather than investing in Fartcoin, he would prefer to buy an abstract painting, at least that painting "is still something people would want to hang on the wall."

But it is precisely because he strongly opposed it in the letter that Fartcoin became even more eye-catching. When a financial veteran known for "rationality" and "value" begins to make lengthy comments on a meme coin, you know this is no ordinary "junk coin" anymore.

Another researcher from an asset management company expressed his views more directly in a report titled "The Fartcoin Phase of the Market." He wrote: "I disagree with the statement that 'Fartcoin is useless.' Its purpose is to annoy those of us who think we are engaged in serious work in finance." The text is filled with anxiety about the market's irrationality. He referred to this phase as "Fart-style Crypto Economics" and pointed out that Fartcoin is not a failure but rather precisely hits the market's three new logics—nihilism, attention economy, and sheer stupidity.

In his eyes, the core of Fartcoin's success is not the technology, but its ability to spread. It can spark discussions, create emotions, and force everyone who takes the market seriously to respond to it. Even if you just criticize it, you have already fallen into its trap. "Fartcoin is a product of AI precisely manipulating the human brain; if you think it resembles a financial experiment designed by malicious artificial intelligence, that's because it is."

And if the first two had some anger and restraint, the attitude of another billionaire seemed much more relaxed. This co-founder of an asset management company, a rational representative of traditional finance, is known for his calmness and factor modeling, yet suddenly dropped that "rational actor assumption" when facing Fartcoin. He wrote on social media: "Ironically, Fartcoin is the only thing I have no doubts about." In the context of that post at the time, this was a gentle mockery of the absurdity of the entire market.

In this parody, Fartcoin does not disguise itself as having "fundamentals" like other assets. It never claims to be some kind of innovative infrastructure, nor does it peddle any technological narrative, but instead, it stands there naked, admitting that it is merely an "emotion product." On the very day he made this statement, Fartcoin took off again, with the price rapidly increasing.

What is even more intriguing is that this investor said a few months later: "Fartcoin's performance today and over the past month makes me think I might need to distance myself further from what my mentor taught me." (His mentor is the founder of the "Efficient Market Hypothesis")

Does Fartcoin also have its own "micro strategy"?

The coin named "Fart" not only firmly stands above a market value of one billion but also, like Bitcoin, has its own existence similar to MicroStrategy—FartStrategy.

When even the "meme" can replicate a certain well-known company's model of "buying coins, then buying coins, using holdings to support market value," this absurd drama has truly completed the last piece of the puzzle.

A well-known financial commentator did not miss this spectacle. In his 2025 column "The Crypto Perpetual Motion Machine," he dedicated a section to analyze FartStrategy, calling it "the pinnacle artwork of financial nihilism." The article begins with: "If you can package and sell air, then why not Fartcoin?"

The operational logic of FartStrategy is very simple, even brazen: it is a DAO specifically created for purchasing Fartcoin, and its mission statement is, "Hot air rises, and we will ride this wave to create value for Fartcoin and $FSTR (the token of FartStrategy) holders."

It has no profit model, no application implementation, and no stable mechanism. It is just a transparent joke, dressed in the guise of a smart contract, packaging "we intend to continue buying Fartcoin" as a "financial strategy" under the name of community voting. Even the official copy states bluntly: "FartStrategy is an absurd example of comedy, and holding it should not be expected to yield any economic benefits."

The commentator likened it to a mirror derivative of a well-known company—the latter continuously raises funds to buy Bitcoin, inflating the company's valuation; while the former relies on the interaction of memes and DAOs to self-pressurize hot air, forming a "Fartcoin flywheel", a financial perpetual motion machine driven entirely by emotions. He described it as "a leverage container with hot air as its asset"; when its market value exceeds the total value of the Fartcoins actually held, it sells $FSTR to buy more Fartcoin, completing a meme pixel-level closed loop.

The Future of Fartcoin

Fartcoin walks out of absurdity and stands firm in chaos.

According to data from certain data analysis platforms, from January 3, 2025, to May 9, the chip structure of Fartcoin is gradually shifting from early large holders to a more dispersed distribution among retail investors.

Especially from January to May of this year, the number of addresses holding less than 1000 dollars began to rise sharply. At the same time, Fartcoin has also become one of the most actively traded coins in terms of trading volume and liquidity on a certain trading platform.

From the initial institutional manipulation to the current dispersion of chips. All seemingly rational financial narratives ultimately reveal their true nature in the toilet humor of Fartcoin.

Fartcoin almost fits all our stereotypes of meme coins: a funny name, no practical value, and it became popular solely through linguistic effects and social drives, even leaving traditional Wall Street investors feeling baffled.